Monday, March 19, 2012

Journey 2: The best ipecac Straight from Hollywood

So dear readers, it has been a while since I have delved into the fecal matter that is the bottom of the barrel hollywood ejaculate that comes out at around this time every year. You know, after the big christmas and oscar season movies are gone and before the summer blockbusters hit they use the months in-between to dump cheaply made garbage to make their budgets back on the opening weekend and a bit of profit over seas. As a result we get Journey 2, staring The Rock and Michael Caine, a movie so bad that it is actually below both of them.

The Review:

This movie is so utterly terrible that I honestly, in retrospect, would have rather watched The Scorpion King again. OR perhaps a peoples elbow to the nuts would have been preferable. This film is a prime example of what has happened to modern movies. Hollywood, like the music industry, has spent the last decade-ish attempting to find exactly how little work they can put in to a project while still making a profit. Their breakthrough is that you dont actually have to make movies in which things like plot, story, characters/character development matter. All you need to do is get the appropriate names as far as actors and brand recognition go and put them into a trailer compelling enough to get people out of their homes for one weekend, thus allowing the studios to make their money back. As a result, and as Journey 2 is the lastest test subject in this horrid experiment, what you get with this movie is a collection of colorful images and action sequences intercut with "hilarious" dialogue that are cobbled together in a way that convinces you that you are watching a movie. Its just a series of things that happen that begins and eventually ends with little that connect the two points together. Heres a couple of images to show exactly what I mean.

This is a bare bones representation of how the plot of a movie is structured. This is basically how most movies are built, exposition leading to an initial point of conflict with rising action building to the climax and then dropping off towards the end. Journey 2 is not quite structured the same way. Heres a diagram of how its plot progresses.

Yup. Its all over the fucking place. There is no exposition in this movie. Within the first five minutes you have some shit eating kid breaking the law and the Rock being kind of mad but still, wanting to connect with the aforementioned shit eating kid, he helps him crack a secret code and flys him to some island to buy his favor. All of this SHOULD have happened, in a reasonably structured film, in about the first half hour, giving us time to get to know the characters, their motivations, establish some actual mystery behind the mysterious island, you know, compelling movie things. Instead, in minutes they are on the adventure to the island where they meet the required ethnic stereotype and the love interest who take them into a permanent hurricane which of course lands them on the mysterious island in question. What follows is the most illogical string of action scenes with dialogue that just screams punch up writing, IE the question was asked multiple times "ok we are done with the scene with X giant animal, how are we going to make the five minutes of dialogue we have to put in to make it feel like there is some sort of plot funny and interesting?"The answer? The following three things would happen.

1) The Rock calls Michael Caine a grandma and Michael Caine is snarky and british back at him.

2) The boy is awkward around his love interest/mad at the Rock for trying to be a good father

This movie is one of the many tumors that is slowing killing American culture. However, I am going to end on a bit of a bombshell. I had SO much fucking fun watching this movie and laughing at it that its difficult for me to not recommend it. The level of idiocy, while painful to someone who knows what makes a good movie, was so over the top that it made me howl and tear up from laughing so hard. For instance, in the trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1aNIOIAiUk at about 2:20) you see the Rock doing a bit of peck dancing and the kid flicking a berry off him. You would think this scene maybe lasts another five seconds, given thats how long the joke actually needs. No. It goes on for something between two and a half to five minutes! Holy FUCK I was dying. Its just so ridiculous. So heres how I will approach this recommendation. First, know that by giving this movie money you are literally killing the culture of the human race. Secondly, you need to see it with at least one of your best buds. And finally, you need to see it in a completely empty theater so that you can get involved in yelling and laughing in disbelief at the train wreck of awful you are witnessing. If you can ensure the latter and live with the former, I cant help but suggest watching this, if for no reason other than coming to comprehend just how far mainstream American cinema has fallen.